Cell phone software: Too much too soon?

Handset makers are feeling more pressure than ever to find ways to generate revenue. One answer seems to be to sell mobile phones packed with new features, but some worry that troubling problems with this approach are being neglected.

Of all the features on the Kyocera Smartphone released last month in the United
States, one stood out: a "reboot" button.

Although the smallest thing on the phone, the button is a large sign of the inherent
problems that will befall the cellular industry as it crams increasingly sophisticated
technology into its products. The reboot
button is typically associated with PCs
and other computing machinery, a sort
of last-resort ejector seat used when
complicated software crashes.

Unfortunately, fixing a phone's service
isn't as easy as hitting a button. Save
for just a handful of people savvy
enough to know the difference between
CDMA20001xevDO and TDMA,
customers are at the mercy of the
carrier when things go wrong with a
handset. Then there are the myriad
software languages used in creating
and sending the data--a labyrinthe so
complex that a single e-mail from one
phone to another can travel any of
10,000 paths at any time, some
analysts suggest.

"The three-fingered, 'Ctrl-Alt-Delete' solution used to be a joke in the industry," says
Michael O'Brien, chief executive of GoAhead Software in Bellevue, Wash., which among
other things offers diagnostic services for telephone networks. "I don't think people have
even started to address the problem. People haven't even thought about the disease."

In this time when even industry stalwarts Motorola and Nokia are seeing cell phone sales
plummet, handset makers are feeling more pressure than ever to find ways to generate
revenue and shake out of the telecom slump. One answer seems to be to sell mobile
phones packed with new features, such as Internet access and other interactive services.

But some in the phone industry worry that these companies, in their rush to sell these
steroid-injected phones, are neglecting potentially troubling problems--especially in the
relatively unfamiliar realm of software. Already, some services have been offered
prematurely, resulting in glitches and even recalls.

Nokia, for example, recently disclosed a software problem that could affect its plans to
launch next-generation technology, called "3G." A repair is planned, but the embarrassing
episode has raised questions about the software acumen of wireless phone companies
and the long-feared problems regarding multiple
communications standards, both U.S. and international.

The specter of phones becoming overloaded and crashing
has loomed particularly large after some handsets using
Java technology did just that in Japan last year, resulting in
a recall. Phone makers are learning why software, unlike
hardware, is subject to a seemingly endless series of fixes,
security patches and euphemistic product "upgrades" often
issued to do both.

IT support staff for phones? Some software developers think the day will come when
phones will need information technology managers, the kind
of support staff necessary to maintain large PC networks for
employees and customers.

"It would be difficult for a consumer to reprogram his or her phone themselves without the
necessary specialized cables and software," cell phone software developer Hugh
Blemmings writes in an e-mail.

A casual conversation with another software developer shows why.

Peter Hofmann's "10-minute fix" needs a technical dictionary to understand. He explains
that to update your cell phone in Europe, where the standard called GSM is king, phones
have a subscriber identity module (SIM), which is used to identify the subscriber to his or
her calling network and to encrypt the call's data. Applications that run on the SIM can be
updated by the carrier.

The issues are as important as they are seemingly indecipherable. Despite current
economic hardships, growth rates of cellular handset sales and wireless Net access are
still expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

Nokia said it expects 1 billion people to use cell phones by next year.
WR Hambrecht predicts that wireless Internet use will grow from fewer
than 1 million subscribers today to more than 10.5 million at the end of
next year in the United States alone. Taking a broader view, total worldwide spending on
wireless technology and services is expected to rise from $77.5 billion in 2000 to $134
billion in 2004, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association.

Yet a downturn in telecom is taking its toll. Ericsson Friday announced dismal earnings
and said it plans to lay off 12,000 employees. Bellwether Nokia also cut forecasts.

Against this precarious industry backdrop, the phone makers themselves are clearly more
worried about lifting slumping handset sales than acting upon the concerns of an industry
about phone service that hasn't yet been released.

"There will definitely be some design issues as handsets become more complex," Jupiter
Research analyst Seamus McAteer said. "With aggregate growth in the wireless sector
slowing and competition heating up, we may well see
the slightly premature launch of new services that haven't
been adequately tested in the field."

That could spell certain disaster in today's massively
complex networks.

Carriers share some networks, or pass off customer
coverage to each other. Pieces of a carrier's network,
made up of towers and bay stations, are located across
the globe. Inside just one of these bay stations is an
entire world of computing, with up to 50 applications, four
different central processing units and millions of pieces
of software.

"We do lots of testing on these phones, we go through
all the combinations," said Nokia spokesman Kevin
Nowak. "They are pretty crash-resistant. You can never
discount the possibility, but outside of computers, very
few electronic products crash."

Except for two weeks ago, of course. That's when Nokia admitted that some of the
phones they made for the American market wouldn't work on high-speed networks to be
launched later this year. The fix? It plans to give U.S. providers Sprint and Verizon a
software patch for the problem to load into their own networks.

Verizon had its own proposed solution to the Nokia glitch: Don't sell Nokia phones to its
customers--though no decision has been made on that option.

Ericsson took another route and recalled the phones. The company said on Tuesday that
it had no other recourse but to withdraw from the market its first shipment of its new
GPRS mobile phones because of a flawed factory installation.

An overload of features
Starting in May, Japanese telephone service provider NTT DoCoMo is expected to launch
the world's first service offering customers the next generation of phones capable not only
of making telephone calls, but receiving and sending e-mails, patching into a company's
computer network or cruising the Internet, all at speeds once only thought possible for
personal computers.

But nothing is coming easy. NTT DoCoMo acknowledges it's having difficulties sending
the videos and other so-called "rich media" files through the network. It's also worried
about running out of the radio waves needed to run the service in five years and has
applied to the Japanese government for more.

None of this comes as a shock to Nitin Shan, now general manager and executive vice
president at San Jose, Calif.-based ArrayComm. He was
one of Lucent Laboratories' first engineers to experiment
with the phones of the future in 1995.

When Shah began working with cell phones in 1995, most
were only capable of making telephone calls. The
second-generation, or 2G, phones started arriving in 1996
and 1997. They are capable of both making telephone calls
and receiving bits of data, like e-mails, or a Web page.
Third-generation phones, expected to reach Japan in May
and the Americas by year's end, are supposed to receive
both voice calls and data, but at speeds matching what
personal computers connected to the Internet operate at.

At least that's the industry's thinking. Reality has been much different.

Will 3G save the day?
Telephone companies have latched onto "3G" in the hopes of finding new ways to make
money. European telephone companies have spent more than $100 billion on building these high-speed networks and buying the licenses to operate them. American carriers have spent about the same.

The huge expenditures have caught the attention of banks, which are now making it more expensive for telephone companies to get the needed loans to finish the build-outs. Wall Street is also taking notice and investors have been pummeling the entire sector.

With so much riding on these networks, Shah said it's surprising that there isn't much new about them. In fact, most carriers used their existing networks, which were only capable of sending voice calls to and from users, and added hardware to it that lets it handle the streaming videos, e-mails with attachments and other pieces of complicated data that comes with the promise of 3G.

The result, Shah says, is a "lot of legacy," that may force the same carriers hoping to reap billions of dollars in new revenue to scale back next-generation service, or else charge consumers an unattractively high price for it.

"The more that goes out there, the more the networks get congested," he said. "The question is whether you can deliver (information in) a cost-effective way."

Thank You

By registering you become a member of the CBS Interactive family of sites and you have read and agree to the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Video Services Policy. You agree to receive updates, alerts and promotions from CBS and that CBS may share information about you with our marketing partners so that they may contact you by email or otherwise about their products or services.
You will also receive a complimentary subscription to the ZDNet's Tech Update Today and ZDNet Announcement newsletters. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time.